


By Myself But Not Alone

by dwarrowkings



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Reincarnation, Watcher AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 16:36:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwarrowkings/pseuds/dwarrowkings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say that when a Watcher Walks, doors that were once open close. The Walker does not know about this saying yet. It is not his place, not his time. It is not this place, nor is it this time, and he will not know about it for centuries.</p>
<p>By then it will be too late to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Myself But Not Alone

There is a story about a wolf and a bear who were such great friends to men that they were granted human bodies and immortality.

This is not that story, though it is part of it.

It starts with a man. Or, rather, it starts with a being who looks like a man, and who is very much like a man, except that he outlives all of the men around him. He watches them, and sees dangers that they do not remember from one generation to the next.

He protects them.

They call him the “Watcher” in their language, and he likes it, but it is not his name. He tells them stories of their past. Warnings about their future, teachings that were not told because the teacher died too soon to pass on the wisdom. 

And, when they do not need him anymore, he walks away.

\--

Stacker Pentecost touches his index finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. He knows it won’t stop the bleeding, but it does alleviate the headache somewhat, so he keeps doing it. He has four. Four Jaegers to save the world with. He’d rather have thirty. His pilots keep dying, though, as bigger and stronger Kaiju come through the breach, and the day that a Category V comes through looms darkly over his head.

“Category IV,” Tendo says, “Codename: Mutavore,” and Stacker’s shoulders slump incrementally. He takes a breath. “Striker’s still in Sydney?” He asks Tendo, because if there is any way that they can get the Mach V to take it down before it destroys the whole damn city, Stacker will take it.

“Yep,” Tendo says, and then immediately “Yes sir.” He punches keys, rapid fire, and gets Herc on the line. 

“Sergeant Hansen,” Stacker says. Herc’s shoulders jump to automatic attention. “Suit up. There’s a Kaiju on the loose in your bay.” Herc’s response is automatic, ingrained. He taps out the sequence to boot Striker up, even though a technician like Tendo normally does it. Herc executes the programming sequence without any difficulties. It is automatic, ingrained in all pilots in case of an emergency. 

In case of an emergence from the breach. They have learned to be prepared for anything. They have a world to protect.

\--

The man leads his people out into the desert, and none of them die.

They say that when a Watcher Walks, doors that were once open close. The Walker does not know about this saying yet. It is not his place, not his time. It is not this place, nor is it this time, and he will not know about it for centuries.

By then it will be too late to change.

He teaches his followers to carry water, and how, and how to find water even in the driest places. 

His feet are bare and calloused, tanned dark as night and almost as quiet.

They call him “Walker,” and it fits around his shoulders like the mantle of his first kill.

They build huts and live in them, out of sight of the sun and the moon and build fires to keep away the night.

When they have learned all they can from him, he walks away.

\--

Stacker finds Raleigh in the coldest part of Alaska, on the coastline, building a monument to cowardice that will never save anyone. 

“It’s been a long time,” Stacker says. The wind bites at his face, and Raleigh’s mouth curls minutely, as if he’s won a battle that only one of them knew they were fighting.

“Five years, four months,” He says, not including the days, hours minutes. Stacker can count them in the lines on Raleigh’s face. 

Stacker inclines his head, ceding the point.

“We need to talk,” Stacker says, obvious, but necessary. Why make it a point to fly all the way to the tippy top of Alaska, just to see an old acquaintance?

Raleigh smirks again, this time more obvious, and walks away before he says “Step into my office.”

Stacker follows.

\--

The man finds a woman, and falls in love with her spirit. She is quick and vigilant. Loyal to her people. He does a thing he did not know that he could do, and touches her arm. 

He gives her part of himself, and she lives longer than anyone he has ever known. Her name is the moon, and she shines brightly, reflecting whatever light is shone on her in the darkness.

She stays with her people, to watch and protect. They call her “Watcher” and the name feels right sliding off their tongues into her ears.

Walker sees that he is not needed in this part of the world anymore, and moves on.

\--

Mako says “For my family,” like it’s a wall that will protect her.

“If we had more time,” Stacker says, dismissive. She is a half-coiled spring. The pressure isn’t great enough for her potential to burst forth.

Stacker walks away.

Mako seethes, but holds her clipboard delicately as she watches Raleigh fight with the grace of a wolf, and the nonchalance of a sleeping bear.

Something isn’t right.

Raleigh says “What’s your problem?” like Mako is the one who should be addressed. Stacker knows that Raleigh knows better. 

“What?” Mako says, incredulous. This is not the type of question she should be asked. It isn’t protocol.

“You make a little..” Raleigh pauses, makes a face, jerks his head, “gesture when a fight ends.” He obviously means for the face he made to make up for the word he couldn’t quite find. He almost succeeds. “Like you’re critical of that performance.” Stacker has been assessing the candidates so far, and none of them are very good. Or, they are very good, they are just unacceptable matches for Raleigh. Stacker wonders for a moment if Mako rigged the test, and then decides that if she did, it wasn’t conscious. 

Mako and Stacker wait.

“Can we change this up?” Raleigh says, and Stacker knows what is coming. He can see it in Raleigh’s feet, travelling up his knees, the cant of his hips, and up into his shoulders. Stacker sighs internally, and resigns himself to giving up the daughter he saved and protected to the Drift and possibly the Breach.

They fight.

Stacker tries to convince himself they’re not compatible, but when Mako has Raleigh on his knees, he sees a look on Raleigh’s face that hasn’t happened since Yancy, and Stacker steels himself for the future.

\--

Man spreads, and they need more watchers. He chooses some at birth, born noble and good and destined to spend the rest of their days the same. He finds others on the brink of dying, reviving them with a touch of his hands, and giving them the thing that they clung to with their dying breath - the ability to protect. 

He finds the pair, and they are unique for two reasons. For one, he’s never done two at once, two souls forged into twin watchers. And for two, they are animals - a mismatched, unlikely, pair, but resilient. They protect humans, even when they are threatened, risk their lives for it. They work together. The Walker has never done it before, but he gives them human, immortal bodies, and speech. 

They thank him, and they touch fingers for the first time. _Brothers_ , the Walker thinks, and they smile at him and each other. They smile at the earth, and it feels like rain. They smile at the sky, and it feels like sunshine. The wind picks up around them, ruffling their hair, and they cry out joyous and heady. 

The sun shines on the Walker’s skin, the wind brushes his shoulders, the earth niggles at his toes, and they all say the same thing. _Thank you._

\--

Stacker hears about Mako and Raleigh’s failure, in the sirens. The wind kicks up in the dome, as if propelled by gentle fans. A chill creeps up his spine, one that Stacker hasn’t felt in a very long time.

He runs to the LOCCENT, and Tendo is pulling out the main power line. Herc is yelling for him to cut it, and Stacker echoes the sentiment.

Tendo is backlit by the plasma cannon, his hair shining blue, but fading when he stands up.

“I just did, sir.” They all turn, and watch the arm of Gipsy Danger power down. _Damnit._ Stacker thinks. That was their last option. 

Herc looks disappointed and heavy. His son looks disapproving. Chuck can disapprove all he wants, Stacker dares Chuck to make him give a fuck what he thinks. 

\--

The Walker takes a daughter after his moon dies. He is drawn to the girl, assumes it is the terrible trauma from which he saved her. He raises her as he would have his own, if he had ever had children of his own.

She grows into a beautiful woman, and he realizes that she is his first all over again, reborn and new. She is Watcher (daughter, sister, friend), one in a human body, and he rejoices for her that after millennia, she gets to have a human life, full of joy and sorrow and then finally, the boon of death. 

The Walker does not believe that he will get this for himself, but he is grateful to whatever deity out there - and there are many, some false, some improbable, but all of them have the belief of their followers - that it was granted to his first, his favorite. His sister, the moon.

\--

Stacker sees the boy run across the loading bay of the Shatterdome, and his blood thrums with joy. Raleigh is special, he thinks. He’s always known, but not how. At first he thought it was because he was something other, but that was not it. It was Yancy, Stacker thinks. Yancy and Raleigh together. They were parts of a whole, Stacker realizes, twinned souls crying out for destiny. 

The young boy, blonde and bright and young - almost five, if Stacker’s memory serves right, smiles and the sun seems to shine brighter, even in this dark, industrial cavern. The wind kicks up, and Stacker’s feet ache with weariness.

Blood trickles down his nose, and he heads to his room, handkerchief pressed to his upper lip.

\--

There was once a queen, enamored of the man with no shoes, who seemed out of time. He’d been there as long as she could remember, and probably for longer. Historical memory stretched far, and the man stretched farther. 

“I could give you the world,” she says, leering, almost greedy in the torchlight. 

“I could have it,” the man says, his bare feet cold on stone. 

“So it’s yours, then?” She asks, and the man walks away into the night.

\--

“You are your father’s son,” Stacker says, “so we’ll Drift just fine.” Stacker does not air his concerns. Chuck is half of his father, but half should be enough to get the job done.

Chuck eyes his father, as if some ancient rivalry, almost buried underneath the sentiment of the moment is unearthed. The boy becomes a man, and lines his shoulders up with his father’s.

Stacker nods, because this is how things are supposed to go, this is an ending he can accept.

“That’s my son,” Hercules Hansen says, tears filling his eyes, and for the first time in ten years, they spill over. “My son.” Chuck cries too, and Stacker doesn’t want to hurry them along in this moment between them, but the longer it stretches, the less time they have to save the world.

They need to get on with it.

\--

One of the Walker’s creations does the unthinkable. 

He has a child.

None of the Watchers have ever done this before, threatened the balance of the world in quite this way. He looks onto the tanned skin of his friend, his brother, and imagines it bleached white as bones, hard and rough.

The others send them their sick, their criminals. For a hundred years, it’s fight or die, and sometimes both. 

They survive, and the Watcher is tougher for it. So is his son. His wife dies, and the Walker cannot mourn her passing, because there have already been so many. 

He walks on.

\--

Stacker hits the eject button instead of the trigger. Chuck freefloats into the only remaining viable escape pod and shoots out of Striker Eureka’s airlocked top-vent. 

_This is the last of my walking,_ Stacker thinks. _Let’s fucking hope it works._

He flips the switch and hopes there will be never be a need for this kind of sacrifice again.

He walks.

The door closes.

\--

Knifehead rips Yancy out of the Conn Pod, Gipsy’s face gashed open and Raleigh’s head arcing with pain. Raleigh screams, and Yancy says “Raleigh, Raleigh, listen to me,” Raleigh reaches out, and with the entirety of his being, grabs onto his brother and holds.

He holds so tightly that the rip he feels is not his brother away from him, but rather the feel of his brother’s soul away from its body. He feels heavy, almost bursting, but he can feel Yancy there, warm and solid in his head, hibernating like a bear.

The doctors tell him it’s not possible, that Yancy is dead, but Raleigh doesn’t listen to them.

Stacker tells him that they need him, that his experience is important to the project. Raleigh walks away.

\--

The wolf bears himself a brother, his stomach round and full in his new body. His matching, twinned soul, carried around in his skin until his body can create another for him. No other Watcher has done this either, created another Watcher out of flesh and bone and spirit. 

His brother is born, and the Watcher watches. He steels himself, recharges in the wilds of his homeland. He scrounges, reconnects. He leaves Yancy with trees, deer, bears as baby sitters, as he works on the wall. Yancy grows up, and begins to know hunger. Raleigh takes a job with higher rations, and begs the wind to be gentle with him.

The Walker comes to get him.

He walks with him towards the fate of the world.

\--

Stacker Pentecost flexes his hand, dark-skinned and new. He looks exactly as he did, before, minus the scars. His headaches are gone, as well has his nose bleeds. He knows pain and strife and maybe, at some unknowable point, blessed death.

“Luna,” he says, turning his face into the full moon. It’s a prayer and a plea. A blessing. 

Mako takes his hand, and leads him away. Raleigh is waiting with Yancy, ten now, and so full of life that it sometimes hurts to look at him.

Stacker settles in a house in Japan, letting Mako and the moon take care of him, as he’s taken care of the world. Yancy runs around the house, bright and happy and alive. He misses his brother, but he always comes back to them.

The world is made into a circle, and eventually all roads lead back home.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any questions, just ask! I like this weird little fic, and I have more of it in my head, but none of it seemed to fit in this story.  
> To be honest, I don't know where any of this came from, or why it went where it did. Oops?


End file.
